Saison How Rye I Am (Rye Saison) - 2011 - 1st Place Best of Show - HBT Comp

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usurpers26

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 15, 2009
Messages
176
Reaction score
12
Location
Connecticut
Recipe Type
All Grain
Yeast
Wyeast 3711
Yeast Starter
4L
Batch Size (Gallons)
15.5
Original Gravity
1.058
Final Gravity
1.004
Boiling Time (Minutes)
90
IBU
24.5
Color
18
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
5 weeks @ 71*
Tasting Notes
A ridiculously rye saison with nice citrus notes throughout.
This beer won Best of Show and placed 1st in Cat. 16 for the 2011 HBT Competition.

So the day started off like any other brew day...or so we thought. Eh, no big deal that it was only going to be 10 degrees out, we will have those burners raging in the garage it will be plenty warm. We should have called it off then...

After spending 30 minutes with a torch thawing out the plumbing and hoses we were set. Wow, it IS cold out. No problem, lets get the strike water going, measure the grains and get crushing. Fast forward about 45 more minutes and we are just about ready to dough in. Hmm, what the hell is that smell - "it sure does smell like propane" we tell each other. Then "whoooosh" and all our concerns about being cold were gone as we now had a 3 foot flamethrower coming out of our damper, sweet...not planned but sweet nonetheless. A couple objects hurdled and a few barrel rolls later, we were able to kill the propane. Wow, it IS cold out and now I sh*t my pants too, great...

Still alive, we continued on - there is beer to make after all!

Now we aren't really sure how much of this process you have to repeat if you decide to make this beverage but good luck :) (and oh yeah, we learned to check ALL our connections much more regualrly after that, especially in the cold).

How Rye I Am - A Rye Saison

Amount Item Type % or IBU
1 lbs Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM) Adjunct 2.70 %
25 lbs Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (1.8 SRM) Grain 67.57 %
9 lbs Rye Malt (2.9 SRM) Grain 24.32 %
4.00 oz Styrian Goldings [5.20 %] (60 min) Hops 24.4 IBU
2 lbs Candi Sugar, Dark (275.0 SRM) Sugar 5.41 %
French Saison (Wyeast Labs #3711) [Starter 4000 ml] Yeast-Ale

Mash Profile
Mash @ 152* for 60 minutes. We mashed thin at 1.8qt/lb.

Notes
Grain to glass in 7 weeks. Competiton entries (first round) were 8 weeks old. Carbed to 2.7 volumes of CO2. We underpitched by about 20% as to stress the yeast a little for more ester production.
 
Looks awesome, and a great story to go along with it.

You beat out my rye saison pretty handily- mine was 10% rye, 10% munich, but next time I think I might go 20% rye and skip the munich. I do love the flavor of rye in a saison. Have you tried other cereal grains yet? I'm trying spelt next, and I've been seeing some people talking about malted oats being really good.
 
I love the simplicity of only using Pils and Rye. Then again, I think I have a Rye fetish too :)

Malted Oats sounds awesome - that would probably pair beautifully with the WY3711 - that yeast gives the beer such a nice silky mouthfeel.


Looks awesome, and a great story to go along with it.

You beat out my rye saison pretty handily- mine was 10% rye, 10% munich, but next time I think I might go 20% rye and skip the munich. I do love the flavor of rye in a saison. Have you tried other cereal grains yet? I'm trying spelt next, and I've been seeing some people talking about malted oats being really good.
 
The WY3711 is really what makes this beer. I would order it online or ask your LBHS to order it for you before substituting.



dirtylarry said:
My LHBS doesn't carry WY3711. Can you suggest a substitute?
 
Absolutely, the percentages should always remain constant regardless of the batch size.

If you use Beersmith or some other brewing software, you could always pop the values in as they are and let the software scale it for you to your desired batch size.

Would you keep the same percentages of grain when brewing a 5.5 gallon batch?
 
How would this recipe be with WLP565? My HBS doesn't carry Wyeast products and I don't want to have to 1. wait for a shipment from and 2. don't want to have to pay shipping. Any suggestions?
 
I wanna do this one but there are a few problems replicating it:

1) It doesn't get down to 10*F here.
2) If I almost burn the house down with a propane leak, SWMBO will never let me brew in the garage again.

:D

Looks delicious! And, I bet the 3711 has a lot to do with the finished character of this brew, it sure is a unique yeast!
 
I love Turbinado, just used 4 pounds in an Imperial Stout...

Anyhow, I dont think you can go wrong with any sugar in this one. The reason we used Dark Belgian was for color - if there is any flavor contributions, they are negligible at best.

i just picked up this yeast today, and i have a closet rye obsession- amazing. how do you think this would turn out with using regular sugar? maybe turbinado?
 
I love Turbinado, just used 4 pounds in an Imperial Stout...

Anyhow, I dont think you can go wrong with any sugar in this one. The reason we used Dark Belgian was for color - if there is any flavor contributions, they are negligible at best.

sounds good, turbinado it is. i'm thinking about not doing a starter with this to really get some flavors from the yeast, but the catch 22 is i want to make sure its got enough guts to attenuate down... hmmm..
 
We underpitched by ~20% - I probably wouldn't stress them too much more than that.

sounds good, turbinado it is. i'm thinking about not doing a starter with this to really get some flavors from the yeast, but the catch 22 is i want to make sure its got enough guts to attenuate down... hmmm..
 
WY3711 is just an animal.

Even though we pitched low on purpose, we had an extremely healthy, viable starter (O2 and stir plate). I can't stress how important healthy, viable yeast is.

The sugar and higher ferm temp helps too.

info says mash at 152, that is not low! I was just wondering.
 
thanks for the info. need to get to LHBS for some rye and that yeast, going to brew that by mid May. Have brew club meeting saturday, sunday is for the mrs and then it brew weekends for the following few.
 
Thanks for all the info! This recipe looks great. I'll be brewing it soon, maybe just with lighter sugar for my desired color.
 
Making something very similar to this on Saturday. Replacing the Pils with 2-row, since it's what I have one hand. Excited!
 
just added my sugar to this last night, gravity was @ 1008 and krausen had just fell. i used turbinado so the color is going to be pretty light, and fermented @ 73-74. it smells/taste great even at a week, pretty pumped.
 
Interesting recipe! I have a few questions about it. What type of sugar are you using? The syrups I've seen have much lower SRM's, are you using rock sugar? If you could link the product that would be great. Also, did you bottle condition these? I kegged a batch of Saison and bottled from the keg for a competition to about 3 vols and got dinged for under carbonating.

EDIT: And one more questions, did you enter as a specialty Belgian (16E) or a Saison? It seems pretty dark for a saison.
 
Awesome, I think you will be very pleased when it's done. We turned ours around rather quickly (7 weeks grain to glass).

:mug:

just added my sugar to this last night, gravity was @ 1008 and krausen had just fell. i used turbinado so the color is going to be pretty light, and fermented @ 73-74. it smells/taste great even at a week, pretty pumped.
 
Yes, it was rock sugar. I want to say we got it from William's Brewing, they had the darkest SRM.

Yes, packaged the entire batch into bottles. Used DME for priming.

16E - good thing for those specialty categories! It is tough to fit most of our brews into a style category. Funny note to add, we actually meant to add another pound of the dark sugar at flameout but since it was so damn cold we simply forgot :)

Interesting recipe! I have a few questions about it. What type of sugar are you using? The syrups I've seen have much lower SRM's, are you using rock sugar? If you could link the product that would be great. Also, did you bottle condition these? I kegged a batch of Saison and bottled from the keg for a competition to about 3 vols and got dinged for under carbonating.

EDIT: And one more questions, did you enter as a specialty Belgian (16E) or a Saison? It seems pretty dark for a saison.
 
Brewed this today. Only had a Lb of rye by accident I purchased too little. I also added a half Lb of oats. And I used some cardamom spice and Ginger in whirlpool.

I prepped a 1.5 liter starter a few hrs before pitch. Again poor planning. Pitched it into a very oxygenated wort and it was fermenting in about 2 hrs.

It is an animal yeast.
 
Awesome, I think you will be very pleased when it's done. We turned ours around rather quickly (7 weeks grain to glass).

:mug:

i certainly won't be able to wait 7 weeks- this puppy will most likely be carbed in the keg by week 4, we'll see how it progresses though.

you dont happen to have any pics of this poured, do you? curious to see the color difference.

i think i may use this yeast for my ginger beer... i think it the citrus and esters would be a welcomed addition.
 
wow... talk about monster yeast- 1.002 on day 8
FxCam_1305307075309.jpg
 
I want to make this one, and would like to use turbinado instead. But I want that darker color. What should I add to get it to ~19 SRM? I was thinking a tiny tiny bit of Carafa III (2 oz) that hopefully at that small amount wont add any roastiness? Any suggestions? Thanks
 
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